About the project

Segunda Vez (Second Time Around) is a film and analysis project using the figure of author, critic, artist and psychoanalyst Oscar Masotta (Buenos Aires 1930 – Barcelona 1979) as a trigger to speak about art, politics and psychoanalysis.

Art refers to performance art, repetition (second time around) and event (to happen again). Politics refers to the complex position of the artist within an urgent political situation, calling for action. Psychoanalysis refers to a method, a form of transmission of knowledge that allows to give complex but efficient answers to complex problems involving language, body, and memory.

Segunda Vez (Second Time Around) will produce a book and a movie on the work of Oscar Masotta. The title is very propitious: in a medium desolated by the yearning for originality, Masotta did unique things doing them for “a second time”.

For the movie, Segunda Vez, we will film the repetition of the three happenings Masotta realized in 1966: “Para inducir el espíritu de la imagen”, “El mensaje fantasma” and “El helicóptero”. Next to that, two other chapters of the film (“Segunda vez” and “La Eterna”) will link these happenings to a specific literary, political and psychoanalytical context.

The book, next to a number of original contributions by several authors, will have the following texts by Masotta, in original Spanish and translated into English: “After Pop, We Dematerialize” (Después del Pop, nosotros desmaterializamos, 1967), “I Committed a Happening” (Yo cometí un happening, 1967) and “Sex and Betrayal in Roberto Artl” (Sexo y traición en Roberto Arlt, written in 1958, published in 1965). We will also try to translate into English “Roberto Arlt and Myself” (Roberto Arlt y yo mismo) (1965).

Soon we will include a teaser and a trailer of the long feature film Segunda Vez.

Credits

For the English translations, we thank MoMA NY for facilitating the translations initially commissioned for Listen, Here Now! Argentine Art in the 1960s, edited by Inés Katzenstein and Andrea Giunta and published in 2004 as part of The Museum of Modern Art’s Primary Documents series.

This project enjoys the support of Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Kunstmuseum Trondheim, Norwegian Artistic Research Programme, et al.

Collaborators

Dora García

Dora García is an artist and researcher on the parameters and conventions of the presentation of art, questions of time – real or fictional – and the limits between representation and reality. She uses various supports to generate contexts in which the traditional system of communication – transmitter, message, recipient – is altered, thus modifying the traditional relationship between artist, work and public.

In 2011 she represented Spain at the Venice Biennale with The Inadequate, and in the 56th edition of 2015 she presented the performance and installation project The Sinthome Score, based on a transcription of Jacques Lacan’s 23rd seminar Le Sinthome. A reference in her recent work, she discovered Jacques Lacan thanks to James Joyce, on whom she has reflected deeply in works such as her film The Joycean Society. She is currently working on Oscar Masotta and the notion of repetition and her ongoing project El café de las voces, which began in Hamburg in 2014 and is still taking place in different cities.

She has had solo exhibition at CGAC (Santiago de Compostela, 2009); Index Stockholm(2009); Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland, (2010); Kunsthaus Bregenz (2013); Universidad Torcuato di Tella (Buenos Aires, 2014); and Toronto Power Plant (Toronto, 2015). Her work is represented by ProjecteSD (Barcelona), Galería Juana de Aizpuru (Madrid), Ellen de Bruijne Projects (Amsterdam) and Galerie Michel Rein (Paris and Brussels). She is professor of contemporary art in Oslo Art Academy and HEAD Genève, and she co-directs with M. Villeneuve and A. Baudelot Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers.

Cloe Masotta

Cloe Masotta holds a degree in Humanities and Communication Studies, and Master in Contemporary Film and Audiovisual Studies (Pompeu Fabra University). MA in Museum Studies and Theory Criticism-PEI (Independent Study Program) in MACBA and UAB. She currently combines her PhD in Communication Studies (UPF) with her activity as a critic, analyst and docent of cinema and contemporary art at MACBA, where she has recently curated the cinema programme La pantalla en blanco with Frederic Montornés.

She has also coordinated the project on Spanish Animation Cinema curated by Carolina Lopez Del trazo al pixel in the CCCB, where she has scheduled various educational activities on the experimental cinema archive Xcèntric. In addition she has been part of the art collective Avalancha.

As a cinema critic she has written in several publications such as Blogs & Docs, La Furia Umana, Contrapicado, and she collaborates with other media such as Transit: cine y otros desvíos. As member of the ACCEC (Catalan Association of Film Critics and Writers) she has been jury in festivals as D’A Festival Internacional de Cine de Autor de Barcelona, and the Annecy International Animated Film Festival.

Andrea Valdés

Andrea Valdés has worked as a bookseller, journalist and independent researcher. She has been published in El País, La Vanguardia, 2G, El Estado Mental, Les Inrockuptibles and collaborated with several artists and curators. She is also the writer and editor of the Yo soy Cámara episode Butler-Braidotti, Two proposal for this century.

Among her personal projects are: Astronaut, a play performed by Theatre O (BITE ’05), La línea sin fin, a publication co-written with the artist David Bestué and ¡Cavernícolas! a collection of chronicles and interviews focused on Argentinian literature (El Estado Mental).

Her latest work is a text for Jordi Colomer’s catalogue (La Bienal de Venecia, 2017) and she’s currently developing a project with La Virreina Centre de la Imatge about biographical writings.

Emiliano Battista

Emiliano Battista is a translator (mostly but not exclusively of French philosophy and theory), a researcher when time permits (on those occasions he is at work on a project about the place and function of the book in the world of contemporary art), and sometime author and lecturer.

He has worked on books with Aglaia Konrad, Mitja Tušek, Herman Asselberghs, and he conceived and produced Daan van Golden Photo Book(s) (Koenig 2014), a study of sorts on repetition. In partnership with theTomorrow, he conceived and animated a program of discussions and screenings at the 56th Venice Biennale (2015), whose participants included Alexander Kluge, John Akomfrah, Maurizio Lazzarato and Jacques Rancière.

His discussion with Rancière on that occasion, focused on the relationship with Louis Althusser and the writing of Althusser’s Lesson (1974), concludes Dissenting Words (Bloomsbury 2017), a book of interviews with Rancière that he just finished editing and translating.

Ana Longoni

Ana Longoni is a writer, researcher of CONICET and professor in Universidad de Buenos Aires. She received a B.A. in Literature and a Ph.D. in Arts from the Universidad de Buenos Aires, where she currently lectures in grade and postgrade courses. She also teaches at the Programa de Estudios Independientes (Independent Studies Programme) of MACBA (Barcelona) and other universities. Her research is specialized in the crossroads between art and politics in Latin America since the sixties.

She is also an active member, since its foundation in 2007, of the Red Conceptualismos del Sur (Southern Conceptualisms Network). As curator, she coordinated the exhibitions Desire Rises from Collapse (2011) and Losing the Human Form (2012), both at the Reina Sofía Museum (Madrid). Now, she is curating the exhibition Oscar Masotta: Theory as Action, that opens in MUAC (México) in March 2017.

Inés Katzenstein

Inés Katzenstein was awarded a master’s degree from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York in 2001 pursuant to studies funded by the Fundación Antorchas and the Fondo Nacional de las Artes. She has written extensively on contemporary art. The major exhibitions she has curated include Liliana Porter: Fotografía y ficción (Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires, 2003), David Lamelas, Extranjero, Foreigner, Ètranger, Aüslander (Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico, 2005).

She was the curator of the Argentine pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale, where she presented the project Guillermo Kuitca, If I Were Winter Itself. She co-curated Zona Franca, MERCOSUR Biennial, 2007.

Her publications include the book Listen, Here, Now! Argentine Art of the Sixties: Writings of the Avant-Garde, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2004, which was translated into Spanish and published by MoMA in conjunction with Fundación Espigas and Fundación Proa (2007).

Currently she is Director of the Art Department of Universidad Di Tella, and member of the advisory board of the magazine Otra Parte de Artes y Letras, and of Museo Malba.

Olga Martí

Olga Martí researches and works in the field of action and new scenic spaces. At present, her study focuses on the hybridisation of action art and writing processes, with special emphasis on the possibilities for experimentation and fracture and their capacity as a critical path and alternative to the established system.

Olga is a graduate in Audiovisual Communication and has a degree in Fine Arts from the Polytechnic University of Valencia. She has studied Film Directing at the NYC Film Academy, has a Masters in Production and Infographic Animation from Jaume I University and a Masters in Artistic Production from the Polytechnic University of Valencia. She is currently enjoying a Research Training grant at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, where she works in the Laboratory of Intermedia Creations research group in the Sculpture Department and is carrying out a doctorate in Art: Production and Research.

She has been on study visits to Middlesex University, Beijing Institute of Technology and the National Taiwan University of Arts. She has received several scholarships such as the Santander Marco Polo scholarship and those awarded by the China Engineering Education Excellence Alliance, National Taiwan University of Arts, Balaguer-Goner Brothers Foundation and Rotary International Valencia. Olga has also participated in exhibitions and festivals in Spain, Columbia, Mexico, Greece, the United Kingdom and Italy.

Tamara Kuselman

Tamara Kuselman attended the Artist Program at Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires during 2016. She got her MFA at Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam after studied Fine Arts at University of Barcelona.

Her performances include Falling Will Take You No Further Than the Ground at Arnhem Museum (2016), Free Fall at SMBA (Amsterdam, 2016), The Schizophrenic Prop at Guest Projects (London, 2015), Don’t let your heat slip away at CA2M, (Madrid, 2014). Still live with Blackcocks at De Appel Arts Center (Amsterdam, 2013).

Kuselman made a residency at Hangar (ES), The Banff Center (CA) and at Smart Project Space (NL) and she’s preparing to start Jan Van Eyck in 2017 (NL). During2015 she got the grants Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst (AFK), Stichting Stokroos Stipend (NL) and Generaciones in Madrid. In 2011 she won the Injuve Prize and was given the Miquel Casablancas grant (ES).

Nora Joung

Nora Joung works as an artist, critic and researcher. Interests include language, communication, suggestion and translation. Mostly working with video, installations, interiors and text – often in the form of speech. Received an MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo in 2016.

Projects, exhibitions and publications include The great human unspoken, solo representation at Noplace, Oslo, winter 2017, group show at Kunstnerforbundet, Oslo, spring 2017 and a solo presentation with UKS at Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo winter 2017/18; text contributions to publications in Sweden, Denmark and Germany, also 2017.

Victoria Durnak

Victoria Durnak is a Norwegian artist and fiction writer. She received an MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo in 2014 and her work explores how meetings between people can happen in our time.

Since 2010 Durnak has two collections of poetry and two novels published by Flamme Forlag. The latest Senteret (2017) is about a single mother with postpartum depression who spends her time at a mall.

Recent exhibitions include Secret Friend at Hordaland Kunstsenter, Bergen (2016) and People We Have Thought of Lately at Spriten Kunsthall, Skien (2017).

Yokoland

Yokoland is a design studio based in Oslo, Norway. The studio works with a wide range of clients, mainly focused on projects within the cultural field.

Torpedo Books

Founded in 2005, Torpedo is a non-profit Bookshop and Publisher devoted to the promotion and production of artists’ books, art theory and critical readers in contemporary art. Torpedo hosts and organises discursive activities, exhibitions and events related to book launches and the process of publishing.

They are the co-publishers of Segunda Vez publications.

Per-Oskar Leu

Per-Oskar Leu is an artist based in Oslo. In his multidisciplinary practice, which includes sculpture, installation and video, Leu often makes use of archival material in order to restage historical events, and to reinterpret works of film and literature. He studied at the National Academy of Fine Art, Oslo, the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste – Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main, and completed the Whitney Independent Study Program in 2013. Solo exhibitions include: 1/9 Unosunove, Rome; Triple Canopy, New York; Johan Berggren Gallery, Malmö; and London Metropolitan University. Selected group exhibitions: Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo; Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Høvikodden; Kadist Foundation, Paris; Frieze Projects, London; Malmö Art Museum.

Mette Edvardsen

The work of Mette Edvardsen is situated within the performing arts field as a choreographer and performer. Although some of her works explore other media or other formats, such as video, books and writing, her interest is always in their relationship to the performing arts as a practice and a situation. With a base in Brussels since 1996 she has worked for several years as a dancer and performer for a number of companies and projects, and develops her own work since 2002. She presents her works internationally and continues to develop projects with other artists, both as a collaborator and as a performer. A retrospective of her work was presented at Black Box theatre in Oslo in 2015. She is currently a research fellow at Oslo Arts Academy.

Oscar Masotta

from: http://post.at.moma.org/profiles/884-oscar-masotta

Oscar Masotta was indisputably a central figure in the cultural world of Argentina from the 1950s through the 1970s. In the 1950s he worked at Contorno, the mythic magazine edited by Ismael and David Viñas; it is here that Masotta’s intellectual project begun to take shape. In this magazine that bore the stamp of the socially committed existentialist on every page, he assumed a self-criticism in the face of the positions taken toward Peronism by the cultural world.

In the 1960’s, following a psychological crisis triggered by the death of his father, Masotta focused his attention on experimental artistic productions (Pop and Happenings) and popular culture-particularly that of the comic strip.

In 1964 Masotta founded the Centro de Estudios Superiores de Arte at the University of Buenos Aires, where he carried out research and led celebrated seminars. He was dismissed during the Onganía dictatorship, at which time he associated himself with the Instituto Torquato Di Tella.

From 1959 Masotta focused on disseminating the work of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. His pioneering work was recognized by Jacques-Alain Miller who wrote, “Thanks to the work of an amazing Argentinian, Oscar Masotta, the teachings of Lacan were disseminated throughout the Hispanic world during the seventies.”

Harassed by the growing climate of persecution and political violence, Masotta left Argentina in 1974 for exile in Europe. This was shortly after he had founded the Escuela Freudiana de Buenos Aires, a project he initiated in Spain. Masotta died in Barcelona on September 13, 1979.

See: http://www.descartes.org.ar/masotta-biografia.htm

Rike Frank

Rike Frank is a curator, teacher and writer based in Berlin and Oslo. She is currently Associate Professor of Exhibition Studies at the Academy of Fine Art of the Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHiO). Most recently she was Goethe-Institute Resident in Salvador da Bahia and together with Beatrice von Bismarck she organized the two-part public seminar “Of(f) Our Times: The Aftermath of the Ephemeral and other Curatorial Anachronics” dedicated to exhibition histories.

Aaron Schuster

Aaron Schuster is a writer and philosopher, based in Amsterdam. He is a visiting professor at the University of Amsterdam, and in 2016 at the University of Chicago. He is the author of The Trouble with Pleasure: Deleuze and Psychoanalysis (MIT Press, 2016).

Saskia Holmkvist

In Saskia Holmkvist’s work, questions of agency and professionalized language are explored through fractured narrative, employing performance, orality, film and improvisation. A hybrid form of realism, Holmkvist appropriates typical interview scenarios to serve as allegory and example. The work retools the aesthetic strategies of documentary with performative interaction to focus on verbal speculation by the subjects most often invited directly from their professional fields. In the process the negotiation of undertaking roles is explored and many works use the interview as storytelling. The interview has been a central area of Holmkvist investigation that touches the politics of interview techniques, developing critical and ethical approaches to question institutional agency. By creating mostly performative encounters between protagonists invited directly from their professional fields to interact through improvisation and in relation to site specificity each of the projects can be seen as a platform to perform, narrate, and share strategies, discourses or resistance.